The present invention relates to training individuals to perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and relates particularly to a manikin useful in providing such training.
Manikins have been used for years for training individuals to perform mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration and closed chest heart massage, known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, and for instruction in rescue breathing where heart failure is not a factor. In the past such manikins have been built in several pieces often including hollow shells of somewhat flexible and resilient materials, with various tubes, bellows, air bladders, valves, and pressure sensors housed within the shells. Articulation of head and neck portions has been accomplished through use of various swivel or hinge joints interconnecting separate parts. Such complexity of manikins provides some realism in the simulation of performing rescue breathing and CPR using such manikins, but is likely to add considerably to the initial cost and to the cost of maintaining such manikins.
The complexity of such previously available manikins thus makes such manikins unaffordably expensive, and thereby creates an undesirable limitation on the availability of CPR training.
It is desirable, nevertheless, to provide some feedback to a CPR student as reassurance that sufficient chest compression is being accomplished to achieve effective cardiac compression, and that sufficient air flow is being provided.
Not only is it necessary to train would-be rescuers to perform CPR on adults, but it is also necessary to train them to resuscitate infants.
What is needed, then, is a CPR training manikin, on which mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing and closed chest heart massage can be practiced, which is inexpensive, durable, easily cleaned, and low in requirements for maintenance and repairs, and which provides for practicing techniques for revival of infants.